My phone has been ringing off the hook most of the day."Did you see it? Did you see the National Prayer Service at OUR Cathedral, the National Cathedral?"
"Well no," I smirked, "some of us have to work you know."
"Never mind, just find it on the internet. You won't be disappointed. The music! Oh, the music was AMAZING. And you HAVE to listen to the sermon. It totally ROCKS."
I am so deeply grateful to the folks over at Episcopal Cafe for their coverage of this extraordinary event.
The above link will lead you to two snippets of music and a sermon by the Rev'd Dr. Sharon E. Watkins, the general minister and president of the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ).
She is, by the way, the first woman to hold this position and the first woman to preach at the National Prayer Service. That shouldn't come as a surprise. The only surprise is that it took the organizers of this event so long to recognize that this kind of excellence could be hiding in the body of a woman.
I found the sermon at The World Council of Churches, which includes a link to the text of the sermon in pdf file, but you know, like all good sermons, it just has to be experienced.
So, here's Part One.
Here's Part Two:
I knew when it was going to be on, so I recorded it off of C-span, which carried the service in its entirety. I haven't watched it yet but ran it through to see if our Presiding Bishop was there, which of course she was.
ReplyDeleteWe actually watched most of the inauguration on C-span so we didn't have to listen to the talking heads. They actually carried the entire inauguration parade that went until 7 PM. The Gay Lesbian Big Apple Band went by at 6:25. By the end, only Barack and Michele and Joe Biden were still watching. (Of course there was secret service but most of the guests had been slowly slipping away since 4:30.)
Hmmm . . . I don't think you can get C-span on your computer can you? I'll have to check that out.
ReplyDeleteI just sent the C-span link to the service to your e-mail box.
ReplyDeleteTheir address is:
http;//www.c-span.org
A most excellent sermmon!
ReplyDeleteThe Cathedral's live stream was over subscribed and not working well. I tried a FOX station but theirs was also having issues. I watched the whole thing on CSPAN. Save these URLs. If you have both Quicktime and Flashplayer installed, you can plug these into Quicktime (File > Open URL...) and watch them full screen.
ReplyDeleteCSPAN
http://play.rbn.com/play.asx?url=cspan/cspan/wmlive/cspan1v.asf&proto=mms?mswmext=.asx
CSPAN2
http://play.rbn.com/play.asx?url=cspan/cspan/wmlive/cspan2v.asf&proto=mms?mswmext=.asx
CSPAN3
http://play.rbn.com/play.asx?url=cspan/cspan/wmlive/cspan3v.asf&proto=mms?mswmext=.asx
I could not get the URL for this entry to work properly. I wanted to forward this from this blog.
ReplyDeleteI'm sorry you had trouble, Matthew. I just tried them both and they worked for me. Try clicking on the lower left hand corner which will take you to the original site. You can then get the url to forward to your friends.
ReplyDeletePardon me. I made an error above. CSPAN uses Windows Media Player. I do not know anything about WMP, so I cannot tell anyone how they can use those URLs in WMP to view fullscreen on their Windows computer.
ReplyDeleteIf you have a Mac, that I know. MS has abandoned WMP for the Mac platform, but another developer has stepped in to provide assistance. If you install Flip4Mac you can run WM in Quicktime. You would insert the URLs as described above.
I didn't get to watch the service until today. It felt good to see all of those folks I knew. The music was wonderful. I didn't have a score card so some of the folks I recognized but didn't have a name for them.
ReplyDeleteI loved the sermon.